Focused - 135: Don't Eat the Frog, with Jesse J. Anderson

Episode Date: September 28, 2021

Jesse Anderson joins us to talk about self-awareness and the struggles with being productive while battling ADHD.

Welcome to Focus, the productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm Mike Schmitz, and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. David Sparks. Hey, David. Hey, Mike. How are you today? I'm doing great. How about yourself? Excellent, and I'm looking forward to today's show. Yes, we've got a special guest here. Before we introduce our guest, I want to just put out one last call for the Relay for St. Jude fundraiser.

By the time this episode airs, you've heard a lot about this and just want to put it out there one last time because this goes through the end of September. Any amount of money that you can donate to St. Jude is a very worthwhile cause. St. Jude treats patients with childhood cancer, and that's a cause that we can all rally around. What they do is they treat the children without charging the parents anything. We've got people close to us who have benefited from the care of St. Jude. And so we're both contributing. And we would ask that you consider making a donation as well.

If you spend a whole bunch of money on some new Apple stuff, consider spending even 10 bucks, 20 bucks, whatever you can afford to help cure childhood cancer. I would just add to that that Relay has blown through goals this year, and I'm so happy for that. I mean, as we are recording this, we've got past the $333,000 goal. We're heading towards a new goal of $400,000. Hopefully, we've hit that by the time3,000 goal. We're heading towards a new goal of 400,000. Hopefully we've hit that by the time the show airs. And what I would tell you is if you're listening, you're like, well, they hit their goal. They're good. Guys, cancer is not stopping. It's still coming. So don't think about it that way. You know, find a way to make a donation. And it's great when I see some of the listeners donate lots of money.

I've seen, I just saw a listener that said, Hey, I'm buying a bunch of Apple gear. I don't need, and I'm giving, you know, over a thousand dollars to the, to the, this cause, which I think is amazing, but don't let that intimidate you. And not everybody can afford to give a thousand dollars, but I bet everybody could afford to give $5 or $10 or $20. And it's all a numbers game. If everybody listening to this show would just give $5, it would make a huge difference. So please consider it. I promise it will be the best thing you do all day.

You will feel so great about yourself after you do it, even with a small donation. There's a link in the show notes. Please go give some money to the nation and stick it to cancer. Right. StJude.org slash Relay if you want to contribute for the end of September, which is National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. All right. So let's introduce today's guest. This is Jesse Anderson. And I discovered Jesse because you wrote an atomic essay, Jesse, a little while ago. That's your words to describe it, about how eating the frog is bad advice. And I thought that was great. We mentioned it on the show. We got connected after that. And I'm really looking

forward to this episode here. We got a bunch of stuff on the outline. But welcome to the Focus podcast, Jesse Anderson. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here and really excited to chat with you guys. I'm a big fan. Okay, so before we get started, eat the frog. Is that Mark Twain who got credit for that? Who said that first? I think that's the case. That's what I've heard is that, yeah, it's a Mark Twain quote of, if your job is to eat two frogs, eat them first thing in the morning and get them out of the way, which really is good advice for most people. When you have ADHD like I do, though, it just doesn't work for the way our brain works because our brain needs to have,

like basically our brain is always looking for dopamine and eating a big frog is not going to give you that dopamine. So if you focus on trying to eat that frog first, what you're going to end up is at the end of the day, you still got the frog sitting in front of you and you haven't done anything else either. Yeah. You know, and we're going to talk a lot today about ADHD. Jesse has really given a lot of thought to it. But frankly, in preparing for today's show, it's obvious to me that a lot of this advice would apply to anyone. You don't need to be suffering from ADHD to want to think about some of Jesse's ideas. So stick with us, gang, even if you're not diagnosed ADHD. The larger point I think everybody can take away from this is regardless of what you think about yourself and your abilities and whether you identify as

having ADHD or not, the general advice that you hear and you see working for somebody else is not necessarily going to work for you. So that Atomic essay, which we will link to in the show notes, I thought this was brilliant because, Jesse, what you basically did was you took this advice that you've probably heard thousands of times and everybody in the productivity world is saying, yeah, this is great advice. Just do this. And you're like, hmm, this isn't working for me. I wonder why. And then you figured out a different way to apply some of the principles, which I think is a really important point. And that's a perspective that we should all have when we're talking about making improvements to our productivity systems. Yeah. And just to add on, I mean, I have given this advice on this show and I do it every

day. I get up and I put the hard stuff in the morning. And so you, you know, this is something that we've told you to do. So Jesse's got a different take and we wanted to share it. Yeah, for sure. I think there it's so easy when you're in the, you know, in the productivity world, like seeing advice, especially when it's almost treated like an axiom. Like it seems like the eating the frog first is where everyone talks about it. And when it doesn't work for you, you feel like you're broken somehow. Like this advice is the advice everyone talks about. Why doesn't it work for me?

And I think the ADHD gave me the freedom to kind of look at it differently. But anyone can sort of look at that differently and say, hey, if this advice isn't working for me, then it's just not working for me and I can try something else. I don't have to just continue to try and do the thing that isn't working for my brain for whatever reason. All right. So let's talk about your frog experience. So you heard this at some point and you said, hey, sounds like a great idea. I'm going to do it. When did you realize it wasn't working for you? I mean, honestly, I've been trying to do it for years and years and years, like most of

my life. And it really wasn't until finding out some of the ways that ADHD is different that really made me reevaluate so much of these things that I would just beat myself up and then continue to try. And it would just fail myself up and then continue to try and it would just fail and fail and fail. And then when I learned about, you know, the lack of dopamine and that trying to do something really difficult doesn't work because our motivation and energy level is really low. It made me re just, it made me reevaluate how things had gone and look back

on my life and realize that, Hey, when I do fun stuff first, I end up doing more work. So like if I have a giant project that's kind of overwhelming, some advice will be to go through that project, break out all the steps, you know, throw in them and OmniFocus or whatever your, you know, whatever your app is, and then figure out which, what's the first step and then what's the next step. And with ADHD, I would look at this giant big project that is overwhelming, and then I would break it into all the steps. And then I'm like, man, that's a lot of steps. That's overwhelming too.

And that wouldn't work either. So for me, what I found was with a big project, I would break out just kind of the first few steps. What would it take to get started? Don't worry about the rest because that's going to overwhelm me if I line all that all that stuff up. But if I just kind of break out that first step and get going, that's where like the momentum can start driving. And sometimes it's not even the most obvious first step, but it's the most interesting step, like

what part of this project fascinates me, what gets me interested in wanting to do the project. And then I find when I do that, that will motivate me to keep going. And then I kind of get in a role, get that momentum going, you know, kind of that flow or hyper focus, where I can really just start driving through the rest of the project. And it becomes easy at that point, because I've got that drive going. It's like, you know, when you start a car, the old old timey cars, and you needed a couple friends that get out and give you a little shove before the engine kicked in. Yeah, exactly.

Kurosh Dini, who's been a guest on this show, and he's a guy who wrote a book about OmniFocus, but he's also a psychiatrist and a really smart guy. He has a newsletter. I'm going to put a link in the show notes. He talks about ADHD issues a lot. And he turned me on to this excellent video called The Wall of Awful. And it really opened my eyes to the challenges ADHD people face in terms of getting that initial momentum. I'll put the link in the show notes. But it's interesting because to the

outside world, you see someone who's dealing with ADHD or similar to ADHD issues. It takes a lot to get them rolling. And they may be sitting there working it up, you know, inside them. And to the rest of us, you look at them and say, well, that person's not doing anything. But that's not really what's happening. They're building up their plan, their idea, how they're going to get rolling. And you've got to give them that space. It really was eye-opening to me, this video.

I'll put it in the show notes. Yeah, that's a great video. I believe that idea is by Brandon Mahan, The Wall of Awful. And it's so, anyone that's had ADHD, and even more, like you said, you watching it, it's really eye-opening to how that works. I can just break it down real quick. But the video is really great. The wall of awful the idea is, when things aren't working for you throughout your life, you're like building up self doubt, and you're building up like guilt when you're like, Oh, I disappointed this person, because I didn't do this activity, whatever it is.

And you start to kind of build up these, these bricks, every time you feel bad about something not working, and you're building up this wall of awful. And then it becomes this barrier to being able to get stuff done in the future. So it's like this self-defeating situation. And a lot of time, people, specifically with ADHD, will run into that wall and they know that they want to do this big task that's on the other side of the wall, but they don't know how to get through the wall. So there'll be like, I think there's five different ways people will try to defeat the wall of awful. And one is just to like, ignore it, try it. And that's when you find yourself kind of puttering around the house doing random things, but not getting the task done that you

know, you're supposed to be working on. And another one is just sort of staring at it, where you're basically you're thinking like man i gotta do this i really need to do this project i really need to get started and you know soon it's like three hours have gone by and you haven't done anything at all um and then the third one is this is how most people end up dealing with it is you hulk smash basically you've you don't know how to get through the wall. So you just burst of anger, burst of energy. You're just like, fine, I'll do the thing. Freaking A. You just get all angry. And that will help. You can break through the wall that way. But it feels terrible. It hurts

everyone around you. So it's not a good solution. And then the two ways you're supposed to deal with the wall of awful is either to, let's see, one them is climb over it and that has to do oh man sorry i'm freezing i can't remember the two ways you're supposed to do it do with the wall of awful well that's okay because the first three that you're describing is the wrong ways i feel like you've been watching me yeah well and it's funny because like i don't think i suffer from adhd i mean I have friends that do and talking to them, they, I mean, the problems they face aren't problems I face, but this wall of awful video resonated with me. Cause I, I, I have the same hangups, you know? I mean,

I still want to hold smash. I still want to find ways to go around. And I do sometimes just get paralyzed, especially when it's something that I've let build up over time. It's like in the video, there's this visual where these bricks get laid as you ignore and you delay, and then you start judging yourself and letting people down. And that wall gets really big, really fast. And I think we all face that. And you still have to get through it sometimes, all face that and you still have to get through it sometimes hopefully not with without hulk smashing right you know the the thing that you mentioned earlier the dopamine i have a feeling that that's key to how you overcome this especially having looked at the essay that you wrote which was talking about not eating the frog but but eating the ice cream first.

So dopamine is this chemical, the pleasure chemical in your brain that I have heard about before, but always in a negative light in terms of dopamine is the thing that you get when you hear the notification dings go off or when you're addicted to something, whether it be illegal drugs or Oreos. Or Instagram likes, you know, it can be anything. Yeah, it can be anything. But it is the same like chemical craving for the thing that you're fixated on. And so it's always been framed as something that you avoid at all costs. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. And kind of what you're describing in this essay is, yes,

this thing is distasteful, but you can kind of move things around and you can frame things a little bit differently. You're not going to break apart the entire project because that's overwhelming to you, but you're going to find something basically that you're looking forward to. And you're using that kind of as a catalyst to start a chain reaction. Is that an accurate way of framing that? Yeah, exactly. So like neurotypical people are, like you said, like they deal with dopamine too. And it's kind of a thing you want to avoid, like, oh, don't let the dopamine pull me into doing this thing that isn't really necessary or caring about Instagram likes or whatever it is.

But when you have like a deficiency, your brain is desperate. It's not like your brain is sitting there saying, hey, I'd really like some dopamine that looks really attractive. It's your brain is like, I'm drowning here. Like I need dopamine to survive. And so to try and ignore it, which is what most people with ADHD, especially when they're undiagnosed, are trying to do because you hear that following these cravings is bad, and it can be, obviously. But you really have to understand if your brain is drowning and just desperate for dopamine, you have to kind of lean into that and use it to your advantage. So just knowing that, hey, I don't want to follow

this dopamine forever because eventually I'm not going to get anything done. And I'm just going to be, you know, sitting on the couch, playing video games and eating ice cream. And that's not a healthy lifestyle long-term, but if you follow it a little bit, you can use that to build up some momentum. And then when you kind of, you know, your analogy earlier of like when you, when the car's revving, once you get the engine purring, then you can redirect and you can navigate in a different direction. But to ignore that process for getting it started when you need, you know, when that dopamine is necessary, it just like sets you up to beat yourself up and just, you know, go down a shame spiral of blaming yourself for not being able to motivate and trying to find willpower that isn't really there. So how do you personally do that? Yeah, so there's this great, there's this great model by Dr. William Dodson called the interest-based nervous system.

And I've kind of adapted a little bit because just to make it easier to remember, and I break it down to the four C's of motivation. And those are captivate, create, compete, and complete. So these are like the four ways that I can motivate myself to get something done. And captivate is all about finding something that captivates your attention, something that fascinates you.

You really want to find something that you're interested in and then that can get you rolling. So like if you're doing like a big paper and it's a topic that doesn't maybe interest you that much, find the part of it that does. Find the interesting aspect of that thing you want to write about and then that will kind of get you rolling. The second one being create. Anything that's about creativity or novelty, like creating something new, that's something that will help get you motivated, get started because there's the unknown when you're creating, there's that unknown. And that's sort of a way to get dopamine because dopamine is all about the expectation of something, the expectation of pleasure. It's not about getting the pleasure. So this is why like

people will be really excited for a big vacation. You're getting the dopamine because you've got that vacation coming up. And then you go on the vacation, you end up in Disneyland and maybe you're not as excited as you thought you were going to be because the dopamine isn't there anymore. It's there for that expectation. The third one being compete. And that one is all about making challenges and like racing the clock and setting up like audacious goals something to drive yourself forward and then the fourth one be complete and this is all about setting up due dates and deadlines so that urgency really drives you to get stuff done yeah i mean i use variations of this without being aware of it myself like when

i'm writing a complicated legal brief, I like to put in really fancy graphics. And that's usually one of the first things I do because it's just fun to create the graphics. And then once they're in place, then I can do the hard work of writing the words. And that is a total, you know, hack I use just to get myself rolling. you know, hack I use just to get myself rolling. So what is the difference between a quote unquote neurotypical brain and this whole interest-based nervous system? Because like David's describing, I feel like this works for me too. Am I ADHD and I just don't know it? Right. Well, I'm definitely not going to try and diagnose you right here live on the show,

but I will say that a lot of people, especially in the productivity space, are undiagnosed with ADHD. They say 70 to 85 percent of adults that have ADHD are not diagnosed. Like, I didn't find out that I had ADHD until I was 36 years old, which is that's a long time to not know that you have this thing. And a lot of that is starting to change like the diagnosis story is getting a little bit better but it's still just way behind like their doctors will go you know all the years of school and they'll say like yeah they talked

about adhd for one day barely and then they forgot about all about it and so there's there's just there's a lot of difficulty with the diagnosis story there. But yeah, one big key difference. So those four C's of motivation that I just talked about are really helpful for people with ADHD. And they also can be motivating for people that don't have ADHD, but people that don't have ADHD. So neurotypical people, because, you know, saying normal is, is a bad language when talking about mental illness. But people that are neurotypical, the way they are motivated instead of primarily these four Cs,

they're motivated by importance. And this can be something that's important to them or important to a boss or a partner, something like that. And then the other two are rewards and consequences. And this is something that was really hard for me to grasp because these three factors, importance, rewards, consequences, are not motivating for the ADHD brain at all. And it feels like they're rewarding. It feels like they're motivating because I like rewards and I don't like consequences. And so rewards can be helpful for me building a habit.

Like if I've done the task and then I get a reward, it's more likely for me to repeat it in the future. But it's, but if I'm at the beginning of a task and you tell me there's a reward at the end, it doesn't actually help my motivation. Or if I know this, like maybe I have a job interview and I know it's really important to be there on time. it doesn't actually motivate me to do anything to be more on time. I still end up late to really important things or I'll still get the big project and avoid it for two months and then try and cram it all in at the last week. Because even knowing that it's important or knowing that there's a big consequence if I

don't do it doesn't actually provide that motivation engine. It doesn't get that car started. This episode of the Focus Podcast is brought to you by expressvpn.com. Go to expressvpn.com slash focus and get an extra three months for free. Going online without ExpressVPN is a bit like leaving the windows in your home wide open.

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And it works on all devices, including iPhones, laptops, even routers. So everyone who shares your Wi-Fi can be protected. It's so important that you protect your online privacy, and I like ExpressVPN because of the simplicity. It's just one button and you're secure. So secure your online activity by visiting expressvpn.com slash focused today. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash focused, ESSVPN.com slash focused, and you can get an extra three months free. That URL one more time, ExpressVPN.com slash focused. Our thanks to ExpressVPN for their support of the Focus podcast and all of RelayFM. So Jesse, you have in the outline here, a whiteboard saved my marriage. Do you care to share some of the details with us?

Yeah. So like I said before, I was diagnosed when I was 36 and it was a huge surprise. We'd been married for about nine years at that point. We have three kids. And it's such a silly thing that was a really big deal for our marriage. this, it's such a silly thing that was a really big deal for our marriage. And it was basically every single night my wife would ask me to take out the trash. She'd be like, Hey, I'm going to bed or I'm finishing this thing. Can you take out the trash? And I'd be like, yeah, no problem. Every single night I'd say, yes, I'll take out the trash. And literally every single night I forgot.

So I'd be sitting on the couch and I don't know, watching a show or doing something on my computer or something like that. And she would tell me, take out the trash. And I'd say, yep, no problem. And next, next morning I'd wake up and find out, Oh, I forgot to take out the trash again last night. But because I had ADHD, I didn't realize this was happening. Like I would know it in the moment, but then like ADHD can have like memory issues. And I would just not remember that this thing kept like every time I forgot, I felt like I was building the wall of awful knowing that I had failed in the past, but then I would forget and I wouldn't change my behavior. So once I finally got diagnosed with ADHD, we saw a therapist and she gave some advice. One of the things she talked about was about object permanence and how important it is to try and have things outside of my brain.

So one thing we did right away was we put a whiteboard up. We just put a whiteboard in our kitchen. And it was a whiteboard that I had to walk by to go upstairs to go to bed. So every single night what we started doing, my wife would write down, take out the trash and she would put a little like box next to it to check it off. And then I'd get up and I'd see the whiteboard and I'm like, oh yeah, that's the thing I said I was going to do. And then I'd go and take out the trash.

And it just, it changed everything because for me, it finally showed like, hey, I'm not like, I'm not being lazy, even though it felt like that was what it was like. It felt like I was just being lazy and deciding not to do the thing, but that wasn't the issue. I was just forgetting every single night. And then it showed my wife the same thing. Like, Oh, I thought he didn't care. And that he was lying to me every time he said he wanted to take out the trash or that he was going to take out the trash and didn't do it. And so it became this huge anchor point for us to come together and realize like, hey, this problem is real, even though we can't see it. It's not a physical limitation that we could see, even though we can't see it. Now we have

this example to show like, if we put the right tools in place, we can fix this problem. And we can come together and it's no longer about us thinking just the negative thoughts about each other about what the problem was. And so it really did. It sounds ridiculous. But that whiteboard really probably saved our marriage. It really was a turning point for us of being able to come together and realize that we just needed to build better tools and better systems for us to do that. And I don't need that whiteboard for the trash anymore. Pretty soon, it was only like a month or two of doing that where it just became a habit. And now I've, you know, it's been five or six years since then. And I don't think I've ever forgotten the trash since,

which is a wild change for us. There's a lot there. Number one that stands out to me is that you sound very appreciative of this essentially productivity system that, in your words, saved your marriage. But I think we probably all have different points where we discovered something productivity related we implemented it and we saw a huge quality of life improvement and we attributed a whole lot of value to that thing whether it be a simple checklist or the first time that you get uh you get introduced to gtd and getting things done first time that you have a task manager that reminds you of something the moment that it's due or slightly before, you're like, oh, wow, this is great. I never had this support system before. And that's really what all of this

productivity stuff is, is it's a support system so that you can do the right thing at the right time. The other thing that stands out to me from your story is that your needs of your productivity system, and I hate using that term, but that's the best one I can come up with, because productivity isn't just how many widgets you crank or how many projects you can complete

or did you achieve all of your goals, but it's really, are you doing what you set out to do? Are you following through on the intention that you set? And that can apply to a lot of non-work stuff, but that changes over time. And so feel free to at some point say, I don't need the support in this particular area anymore and shift your focus and do something somewhere else that's going to provide some benefit for you. Yeah, absolutely. I personally kind of have started using what I call the pivot, where I know that most systems aren't going to work long term. And so I basically will use it

and just know that, hey, eventually this is going to fail. This isn't going to work for me anymore. And that's okay. I just need to be ready to pivot to a new system when I find that that old system isn't working for me anymore. And to be okay with that, not to feel bad or guilty or like that I've failed at using, you know, whatever the system is, but just know like, hey, the pivot's gonna happen. That's okay, that's normal.

Just roll with it and then be prepared to make that move when it's needed. The other thing I would advocate for here is that everybody should have a whiteboard. I've got one in my office and I love it. Whether you use it to keep track of things that need to get done, that's not typically how I use mine. I use it when I'm kind of mapping out what is this project going to include.

But frequently, once I get done mapping all that out on a whiteboard, I leave it there until the project's completed. It's sometimes up there for months at a time. And I keep it there because it's a visual reminder. Every time I come into my home office, I see that whiteboard and I see everything that I had previously thought about this project and it brings it back into focus for me. It sounds kind of lame. I shouldn't need that reminder, that visual reminder that this important project that I decided to work on is going to get done. But I do need that support in the day to day. I need something thrown in my face saying, hey, you said you were going to do this, so you should follow through and do it.

Yeah. And also just kind of the idea of hacking a system to give you the reminder to take the trash out. I mean, we've all got different things like that, that we just can't seem to internalize and, and going outside the box and say, well, you know, my software stack is not solving this problem. Maybe I need a sticky, you know, put a sticky pad on my computer, or maybe I need to put a whiteboard on the refrigerator or whatever it is, you know, maybe I need to etch it into my retina. But at the end of the day, you've got to figure out what it takes to get that going.

And the interesting piece of that story to me was that it became unnecessary after a habit was established. And that's the goal, right? You get the habit established, and then it has its own momentum. And whether you have ADHD or not, um, that is a very useful trick, you know, to get that habit in. And then once the habits and you're good, like, um, like I feed the dog every morning and every afternoon, I don't

have a checklist that tells me to do that because I do it every day. And now it's a habit, you know, um, that's what you've got to, you to, that's the goal for a lot of stuff. You put it on autopilot, then you can turn your active attention to whatever's next. And the external accountability for this is the trigger to start the habit, that's not something that I would advise anybody

to be like, oh, you know what? I don't really need that. As you were talking in the last segment, Jesse, about the neurotypical brain versus the ADHD brain and we need these triggers and they cause these routines and you're not motivated by the rewards. I was thinking through that habit cycle that Charles Duhigg talks about in The Power of Habit and how that might be different for some people. And I think that's, again, a kind of cool thought experiment, very freeing to think about this is the ideal according to some person who has never met me. to some person who has never met me. And if it doesn't work exactly this way, that doesn't mean that it's wrong, but it doesn't mean that I'm wrong either. So I just got to figure out a way to work these key pieces to create the results that I want to achieve, which for you was having that habit of taking the trash out every night. I'm curious though, like what other sorts of things do you do

now that you have that insight to formulate positive habits? Is it the same sort of stuff that you would traditionally be advised or is that different in some way, shape or form? Yeah. So I think a lot of it has to do with trying to get it out of my brain, which I just call like externalizing it because so many of the like those cues for habits that you want to build up. They my brain basically lies to me and tells me that they're going to work. And so I have to I have to ignore that. It feels like it feels like I'm going to remember to do the thing. That's like your prospect of memory where you're like, hey, I should do this later.

And then two hours later, you remember, oh, yeah, I said I was going to do this thing later. I should do it now. And that just doesn't really work very well with the ADHD brain. So I have to accept that and know that use external triggers. So I do, yeah, the whiteboards is huge. And similar to you're talking about, I'll brainstorm on there and I'll have these things

and then I'll leave it up because that will sort of it's almost like a goal, even though it's not a written out goal. It's just like I see that thing and I kind of envision where it's going to land. And so keeping that available and visible is really helpful. Another thing I do post-it notes, of course, all over the place. And I've recently started doing a lot with index cards and sort of putting those in different places. And it's, yeah, a lot of it just has to be external reminders or there's, you know, different apps that can do reminders too. And I also use a lot of those and I just kind of have to accept that I'm not going to remember it.

And I'm even, and I have to remember as well, like, I might not even remember to check the tool. So even having a tool that's going to remind me to do it, it has to be more than that. I, the answer can't be later on, go and check the tool and see if I have a thing to use, because I won't remember to do that either. I'll, you know, something more interesting will come up and I won't check OmniFocus for a week. And it's not going to be a very effective tool for you if you don't check it for a week. So I have to come up with extra triggers that are a little bit more invasive in my life. So I can't just ignore them. So what are some of the ways you've done that?

Yeah, well, so there's alarms I'll use a lot. So there's the Do app, which I really, yeah, D-U-E. I was just thinking that when you described it, that is a very popular app for folks who really want to make sure. In fact, the funny story is I had the same problem as you with my wife in terms of Thursday night, the trash cans go on the street. And for years, every Thursday night, eight or nine o'clock, she'd be say, did you take the trash cans out? And I'd say, no, I'll go do it right now. And I felt like I was putting her in the position of having to nag me about the trash cans because I couldn't get my act together enough to take them out at five. Right. do app i had one task every thursday set off an alarm and pester me until they go out and the same thing i built the habit i don't really need it but do app is very good for that it's kind of like a whiteboard in your pocket yeah it's it's great because there's there's a lot

of alarm apps but that one in particular it nags you it just like it won't let you forget the task it's going to keep bothering you and you can can snooze it, which, yeah, it works so well because I never feel like I'm going to see it and then tell myself, okay, I'll do it and then ignore it, which I do in other apps where it'll come up and say, hey, don't forget to do this thing. And I'll check it off and I'll go away and I'll completely forget about it. But do just nags and nags and nags, which is exactly what I need. One of the things, Jesse, that you've become intentional about, and we talked about, was time perception. And I think this is something everybody doesn't give enough thought to. Explain what your challenges with time perception with ADHD

and how you're getting through it. Yeah, so time perception is one of the big difficulties with ADHD. And obviously everyone kind of struggles with perceiving time at different times. Like time is relative and it shifts depending on what you're doing. But with ADHD, you really only perceive two different types of time and that's now and not now. So like if someone tells me, Hey, uh, you know, say my wife tells me, Hey, dinner's going to be ready in half an hour. Um, to me internally,

I'm just like, yeah, okay. That's not now. So it's not relevant right now. Or she says, Hey, it's ready in five minutes or Hey, it's going to be ready in an hour. Like those don't even really matter. It's just like, well, that's not now. So I'm not, like my brain doesn't accept it as a thing that's actually coming. It's just like, well, that's not right now. So I don't care about it. Yeah. And the same sort of thing.

Right, yeah, exactly. It's like, I don't need that information. Just toss that out. And the same thing sort of happens with big due dates. So like if I have a project that is due in three weeks and it's really important, like I said before, it feels so far like it's basically future is infinite. So like three weeks from now might as well be three years from now. It's so far off the map.

Like I can't even really conceive of it until suddenly it's super urgent. Like suddenly I'm like, I only have the minimum amount of time possible to be able to complete this thing. And now it feels like now the time is here and now I can suddenly get the thing done. And so this, this time perception, some people call it time blindness for with ADHD. It makes, I mean, our society is so built on time that not being able to perceive it well makes things really difficult. It makes due dates difficult. It makes estimating time really hard.

And I don't think we talked about it before, but my job, I'm a designer and a developer. And so I get a lot of tasks that require estimating time. Like we need to know how long this task is going to take to be complete before we can ship this product. And it's really difficult for me. I've gotten better at it by doing things like time blocking. I can't do the, I know, David, that you're really into some of the time tracking, which I've tried, and it's never quite worked for me. I run into the issue of, remember suddenly like oh yeah I should

be tracking this and then I look at my app or whatever it is and it's been tracking I don't know doing the dishes for the last six hours or something silly like that yeah but I have found that doing time blocking just manually like I have I created just a simple printout that was sort of based on the is it make time is that Is that the book? Yeah, that's a good book. Yeah. Yeah. So based on that book, make time, I created like a little printout template and it it's for time blocking my day. So it has like three columns where I have like what I expect the day to look at look like, and then I can write out what I want it to look like or what it's actually looking like. And then sort of adjust throughout the day. And that really helps me see. I mean, at first it was just like, well, man, I'm really bad at estimating where my time goes. But over time, it does help me to be able to look back and see

blocks of time and have a little bit better estimating, even though it is like it's never going to be easy for me just the way my brain works but having that having that time block sheet to look at later has been really helpful in making that easier yeah you know i just done time blocking for a minute i want to interject there i got an email recently from someone that i would say was borderline angry at me about time blocking and i think the problem with time blocking is people treat it as too precious all time blocking in is is is really it's a plan you know you plan your day you try to put blocks in for the things that are important to you but as you get through the day whether you're suffering from ADHD or not you have energy levels that change and priorities that change. I mean, today, as we record the show,

I had planned a time block after we finished recording today to work on a client project. But my dog has an ear infection, I think. So I made a vet appointment. I'm going to the vet afterwards. The fact that I had this precious two-hour block after we record to do this contract, I don't care. I mean, I'm going to do the dog thing, and I'm not going to judge myself for not doing the client thing, because the day changes. And I feel like one of the things about time blocking, I just think people don't get, is that all it is is a plan.

It's OK if you don't follow the plan. You don't need to be mad at yourself if you don't stick to it. But having a plan can really help you get the time for the important stuff. That's all. I'm sorry. I kind of went off on a tangent there,

but it's been on my mind. I'll write a blog post about it. That's the only way I can get it out of my system eventually. I feel like you're speaking to me again, David. Oh, am I? No, we talked about that a couple episodes ago, I think, where that's exactly the trap that I fell into was I had this plan and I was inadvertently fighting

to protect the plan instead of just rolling with the changes. So I can understand how you can fall into that. And I would echo your advice, even though I'm not very good at following it myself sometimes about trying to be more flexible. The other thing I want to call out here, we didn't really mention this at the beginning, but Jesse, you are a developer and I have been involved with development projects and nobody is good at estimating time. That is true. I feel like you maybe are better at this than you realize if you're able to play in that sandbox still. And it's not something that just people with ADHD are going to struggle with. This is project management 101, where we tend to overestimate how well things are going

to go. And so our estimates for things are going to be pretty bad. Yeah, I used to have a coworker and his line that he would always say, someone is estimating time, he would say double it and double it again. And he was right more times than not. Like your estimates are always like way too short from what there's just always going to be extra factors that show up. Or you didn't plan for the four hours of searching Stack Overflow to figure out your problem. the four hours of searching Stack Overflow to figure out your problem. It was at Hofstetter's Law, I think. Jesse, but with the filtered glasses of ADHD in your life, how does that impact you when you have a block schedule and you realize that you're not going to hit your blocks today or things went off the rails?

Does that give you any special challenges? Yeah, so it's definitely difficult because you have, especially when you go undiagnosed with ADHD for so long, you have a lot of guilt for not hitting expectations. Basically, you fail a lot and you don't know why. And so it's hard to not feel that still with that time blocking, which is why it can be difficult. Just like Mike was saying, you feel like, no, no, I got to stick to the plan. I got to stick to the plan.

And so it's definitely a struggle. And I feel like sometimes I'll even cover up the plan. So I've got the sheet out. And when I can feel like today is going off the rails, I might just like take an index card and put it over the plan part of the day. So I don't even see it. Like, I'm just going to ignore that now and not feel bad that I'm missing like what I thought I was going to miss any appointments or anything, but just put it out of my mind because I don't need, I don't need any extra guilt or shame about not meeting some made up schedule that I put on myself. So that's one thing that I've done for sure. Amen. Amen. I once had a Zen teacher that told me like 90% of her job was just affirmation, you know, because

people are so hard on themselves. Like it's okay. That's right. You made a schedule. You didn't stick to it today. That is okay. This episode of the Focus Podcast is brought to you by Novo. Powerfully simple business banking. Sign up for free at banknovo.com slash focused. Cash flow is so important in a small business. It's a math problem with a lot of variables, including your bank fees. It'd sure be nice to take those out of the mix, wouldn't it? That's where Novo Free Business Banking comes in. Novo is the number one business banking app.

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at banknovo.com slash focused. Once again, banknovo.com slash focused to sign up for free right now and get a free copy of Novo's Small Business Starter Guide. That URL one more time is banknovo.com slash focused. Our thanks to Novo for their support of the Focus podcast and all of RelayFM. I want to go back to the whiteboard again, Jesse, just for a moment here, because there's another interesting aspect to that story, which I would love to discuss with you. And that is the relational aspect with your wife, because you said, the whiteboard saved my marriage. And you shared the story of how you weren't meaning to forget, but you just

kind of forget. And that reminded me of one of my favorite quotes by Ed Cole. He said that we judge others by their actions, but ourselves by our intentions. And that resonated with me. If I talk to my wife, she'd probably have some similar form of a story where I was forgetting to do something and her perspective, I just don't care enough in order to do this thing. That's not really what's going on. If you never talk about it, you never get to the root of the issue. And I think that opens up a really interesting concept here of emotional intelligence, which I'm guessing is pretty important for you, especially along the lines of the self-awareness. Yeah, absolutely. So like, first, just saying like that intention, it's so, that's one of the biggest difficulties with ADHD is when you don't know you

have it is because you always have, you have such great intentions and your action just doesn't line up with it and you don't really know why. And so that can be really difficult. But yeah, one of the things with ADHD is we really experience things kind of with more intensity, especially emotions. So in particular, there's a lot of kind of emotional dysregulation, which isn't officially in the diagnosis in the DSM-5, which is how you diagnose ADHD. But there are a lot of people lobbying for it to be added because there have been so many studies of how important emotional regulation or dysregulation is for understanding the way ADHD exists in people. In particular, there's this thing called rejection-sensitive dysphoria. And this was hugely eye-opening for me when I first learned about it. And the idea is

that people with ADHD, when they hear negative criticism or like when you're younger, when you hear teasing or any sort of feeling like that, even if it's like perceived, like sometimes you'll be in a conversation and it will feel like the other person is withdrawing their love or withdrawing their respect or something like that. And the feeling you have is the color to dysphoria because it's such an intense feeling. Some people, including myself, describe it like it's indescribable, but it's almost like a pain. Like you feel literal pain, like somebody's betrayed you to your core with this rejection-sensitive dysphoria. And it can cause a lot of relational issues.

There would be times where my wife and I would be having some argument about something that wasn't that big of a deal. wife and I would be, you know, having some argument about something that wasn't that big of a deal. And then she would say something that would spark that feeling of rejection in me. And then my response, like I would suddenly, you know, level up the argument where suddenly I'm at a much higher emotional intensity than she is. Like she thinks we're like just having this little conversation. And suddenly I am like really mad. And it was obviously terrible because to her it just seemed like what in the world just happened he just like flew off flew off the deep end like why the thing I said wasn't that big of a deal but for me my response was on like contextually matched the way that I felt because the feeling I felt was so deep. And before, I just didn't know what to do with this.

But once I learned about rejection-sensitive dysphoria being a thing, I realized that, well, one, it goes away really quickly. So in the moment, it feels horrendous. But with just a little bit of time passing, you can easily look back and see like, oh, that is not at all what this person meant. Like what they said was not that big of a deal. And I, for whatever reason, am blowing it up the seam bigger than it was. coming and be able to stop it, stop me from saying things that would, you know, damage the relationship more and make it more difficult in the future. And one trick that my therapist taught me that really helped a lot was just to, when I'm feeling that intensity, when I, when it feels like the rejection sensitive dysphoria is happening,

imagine my history of the relationship with the person and think about like, would, do I have outside of this conversation, is there evidence in this relationship that makes sense that they would betray me in the way that it feels right now? And most of the time, no. Like when you evaluate, when you take a moment and evaluate, like, does my history with this person make sense for the way I feel right now? And when you take a moment and evaluate, like, does my history with this person make sense for the way I feel right now? And when you realize that it doesn't, and it usually doesn't, it can help you like, okay, my response doesn't make sense right now. And then I, and then you can have the wherewithal to say, let's take a break. Let's reconvene or let's discuss this later or in 10

minutes or something like that. And then that feeling goes away and it's a whole lot easier to deal with. So that I think has really made a huge impact for me. The trick is finding that space to make that consideration though. You know, for a lot of folks, they go from zero to, you know, pissed off so fast that they don't have time to, to, to ask that question. Yeah, that's for sure. That, that, that's the thing that I've had to learn. I think I told Mike in the discovery call before this, where I have noticed this before, where I want to just like shout back or whatever it is in a conversation. And I've verbally said out loud to my wife in one

of these conversations, I would just say, I think I'm feeling the rejection sensitive dysphoria right now because I am real mad, but I don't think a good idea is to respond to it. And it's, this isn't easy. Like I'm not trying to sugarcoat it and just be like, Hey, just think about it and you can solve the problem. Like I feel like I'm ready to explode like it feels so intense but just by knowing the language knowing the being able to label something makes it so much easier to be able to do something anything about it to lessen what it would be without knowing that know thy enemy makes a big difference yeah damn have you ever tried a meditation practice jesse i have not i mean not really it's it's difficult because like i've tried it before and just get like antsy or

sure bored my mind's wandering all over the place but i've heard there's been studies and i know a lot of people recommend it as being really helpful i mean mean, for anyone, but particularly with ADHD, it can really help as well. It would help you get that space, you know, but it's hard. I mean, people don't enter. I talk about it just enough on the show that occasionally I get an email from somebody that tries it out. And a lot of them are like, oh, this is, this, this is crazy. I can't do this. It's too hard. So I get it. But the, I do think that giving yourself an extra space, you know, being able to like stop and be mindful really can help. Yeah, for sure. me, I think there are, there's a lot of folks that suffer from ADHD that are undiagnosed and self-medicate through productivity binging. And, you know, Mike and I have talked about toxic

productivity where the idea where people are told that they're all their problems will be solved just by, you know, following these three easy steps. But I do think there's an overlap there. And there may be people in the audience right now who are asking themselves, huh, maybe I have some of these issues too and I need to look into it further. What would you tell somebody? What kind of advice would you give? Yeah, I think that topic of toxic productivity is really important. I love that you guys have addressed that on this podcast. Yeah, it's just so easy to beat yourself up for things like that. And I think that almost needs to be a cue for you. Like if you're if you're feeling a negative emotion about productivity, like you're doing it wrong. you should be using and you just need to kind of toss it out with the trash and be open to knowing

that when it's when it's not working for you when that when that willpower doesn't come when you just don't feel the motivation like it's okay to move on and not to be so obsessed that it's the that you're just only looking for new tips and tricks sometimes you just need to kind of sit down and say hey what what has worked before even if it's not the most efficient or the most trendy way of doing it? Like what has worked before for me? And maybe just do that and then move on to figure out some new tip another day. Yeah. So a lot of the stuff that you're describing here, the self-awareness, things like that, that I feel is rooted in this whole concept of emotional intelligence, which I'm very excited to have somebody on the show who is willing to talk about this kind of thing. I grew up in a family business that has assessment and skill building software for emotional intelligence.

This stuff has been preached by my dad since I was six years old. I remember him telling me these kinds of things. And one of the things that stands out to me from that whole concept of emotional intelligence is that a lot of it has to do with communication and two different types of communication, interpersonal, so how you communicate with the other people in your life, like your wife, going back to the intentions versus actions thing again, but also intrapersonal, like you said, David, knowing yourself. communicate with yourself very well, you're doomed from the beginning. I mean, that's where a lot of the guilt comes from is this negative self-talk and, oh, you're such a loser because you can't follow through and take out the trash when your wife asks you to do that sort of thing, right? And so you have to learn why is that? You got to dig a little bit deeper. And the fascinating thing for me about this emotional intelligence stuff is that it doesn't

get a whole lot of attention. It doesn't get a spotlight shown on it. I think it's becoming more of a big deal in schools now with the focus on social emotional learning and things like that. But you dig into this and the research behind these emotional intelligence and these soft skills, which isn't an aptitude where you have this specific technical skill so you can get the job that you want. But these are all the things that are going to determine whether you are successful in that job and you stick with it six months after you're hired or you burn out and you float away and try

something else. I saw one research study going back as far as like 1905 that said that these soft skills, these actually account for about 85% of your personal and professional success in life. So whether you've got an ADHD diagnosis or not, these are definitely skills that are worth focusing on. Yeah, for sure. I think learning more about kind of emotional intelligence is huge. And that self-awareness and self-discovery is really important. Like one way I think you can really help with that is just by building

a vocabulary. And like a basic example would you you'd think of a child and they're, when they're learning about emotions, they learn happy, sad, and angry. And then what, what happens if they have, they're, they're frustrated and confused. Like, well, if they only know if the only emotion they know that sort of fits with that is angry, they're going to get really angry. And because that's what they know as the emotion to go to. And so the more you kind of expand your vocabulary, like our brains are always basically hypothesizing and then experimenting and learning. And so we need to give it more data to do those experiments with. And so like, when I learned about this rejection sensitive dysphoria, it gave me language to use. So when I felt that extreme

emotion, my brain was able to say, hey, wait a second, this is that thing. We've heard of this thing. This is the thing that if you don't blow up right now, it will go away. And it didn't make the emotion go away, but it made me understand it more and I could be more present and have more control of how I responded to that emotion. And I know there's, I've got a quote here from Professor Lisa Barrett, and she says, since our brains essentially construct our emotions, we can teach it to label them more precisely and then use this detailed information to help us take the most appropriate actions or none at all. And that I think is just so huge for understanding how that emotional intelligence is important for being able to

better control our brain and our actions going forward. Yeah, what you're describing sounds a lot like the concept of emotional hijacking, which I find this fascinating. It doesn't matter if you have a neurotypical brain, this is not a knowledge problem because what happens is you get some information and some of that information will go through the prefrontal cortex where you analyze it for meaning and you realize that this person that I'm working with in this meeting, when they said this thing that's kind of passive aggressive, that's not a personal attack. So just chill, dude. But part of it skips that and goes straight to your amygdala. And that sounds the warning bells. And it's the exact same response as a better run because there's a saber-toothed tiger in the conference room.

And you just automatically go to that fight versus flight, right? So I need to respond super strong because my survival is at stake here. And the answer to that is the relaxation response, which is exactly what you were talking about, David, with meditation. It's just, let's just take a moment and think about this. Let's breathe in, let's breathe out, let's recognize how we feel, let's recognize what's really going on, give our logical part of our brain a second to catch up with what's really going on. And then maybe we can temper that response a little bit with something more appropriate. Yeah. If you can just slow the dial down from zero to freak out, you could be a lot happier.

Yeah. And that's still a challenge for me. Even though you're aware of it. Yeah. I get it. Yeah. I do think what's nice is over time, as you respond more appropriately, your brain is learning that that's a better way to approach that situation. Yes, you create new pathways, right?

Yeah, exactly. And we're always creating habits, guys. You know, it's just a question of whether we're making them for the light side of the force or the dark side of the force. Yep. This episode of Focus is brought to you by Privacy.com. Nobody likes having their credit card number stolen, but it can happen so easily online. Just put in your information on the wrong website, and then all of a sudden you have to contest some charges. You

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limits, create single-use cards, which are great for those websites that you only need to buy something from once and you really don't trust giving them your main card number or merchant lock cards whenever you want. So head over to privacy.com slash focused F-O-C-U-S-E-D to sign up for an account. New customers will automatically get $5 to spend on your first purchase. So go to privacy.com slash focused and sign up now. Our thanks to Privacy for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. Jesse, we've been talking a lot today about ADHD. I know some listeners may be asking themselves questions about ADHD right now. If someone was more curious about this, what would you recommend?

Where would they go? Where do you get started? Yeah. So I think there's actually, Dr. William Dodson has like three factors he uses to sort of help diagnose his patients. And two of those we already talked about previously, and that's sort of understanding the four C's of motivation that captivate, create, compete, complete, and how those differ from importance, rewards and consequences, which aren't motivating. And the second is the emotional piece where which we're just discussing the rejection sensitive dysphoria. And then the third aspect that he uses is something that's called omnipotential.

And the idea behind omnipotential is people with ADHD feel like if they can stay focused on something, you can do anything, like anything within human limits. Like if you, if I wanted to be like an engineer and I knew nothing about it, if I could stay focused on that thing, it's possible. And that's something that people with ADHD pretty much universally feel like if I can stay focused on it, which is a big difficulty, but if I can, like nothing is beyond my limits. Whereas neurotypical people will often say like, yeah, well, there's some things I probably couldn't do this. A person with ADHD just believes anything's possible as long as I can stay interested or focused on that thing. So those sort of three pieces, that omnipotential,

stay interested or focused on that thing. So those sort of three pieces, that omnipotential, the four Cs of motivation, and that rejection-sensitive dysphoria, that extreme emotional piece, those are like the three cues that really let you know that you probably have it and are kind of a clue to go forward. Some resources I would suggest, you can look at the official diagnosis from the DSM-5, which will have a list of all these sort of symptoms. And that can help. There's also, there's a great channel called How to ADHD on YouTube.

And Jessica McCabe runs that channel and has a lot of great resources. That's kind of one of my primary things I recommend people check out. And then there's a great book called Driven to Distraction by Edward Halliwell and John Rady. And that's the first book that I read when I found out that I probably had ADHD. And pretty quickly, just in the first couple of chapters, it was extremely obvious like, oh, these, you know, when you're doing the test, you're like, oh, I'm scoring five

on all of these. And it sounds like it's talking about things that I've never told anyone before. It's like my private, what I thought were like family quirks turns out to all be really obvious symptoms of ADHD. And that's because ADHD is super hereditary. It's actually almost as common as height. So like if you have ADHD and you have a kid, like basically every kid you have has like a 50% chance of having ADHD. So if you have ADHD and you have a kid, like basically every kid you have has like a 50% chance of having ADHD. So if you have ADHD, that probably means one of your parents has ADHD as well. And for me, it meant both my parents and my brother and my sister all had ADHD and none of us were diagnosed. But because of that growing up, all my symptoms that were really obvious ADHD symptoms felt to me like family quirks. It's like, oh, this is just the way my dad is. And I'm the same way, or this

is my brother and I sort of do the same thing. And so I never really thought that there were symptoms to look into because yeah, there's that family piece. And then the other half is the people with ADHD surround themselves with other people that have ADHD because their conversation style and things like that, they don't know it, but they're attracted to that other person that has a similar brain. So I basically, when I found out that I had ADHD and I found the symptoms, I started talking to a lot of other people around me that ended up having it as well because we sort of became attracted to each other and enjoyed each other's company because our brains were working in that

same way. Interesting. So in a way, it's kind of like a self-selecting echo chamber, but you don't even realize it because you've normalized it, at least with the family stuff. You had no idea what something else looked like because this was just normal to you. You were surrounded by it. Yeah, for sure. Anything that I did that seemed weird, like that I did, like maybe in school and I'm like, oh, no one else is doing it like this. Or why am I the only one that's late to all the things or whatever it would be? It's like, well, I could excuse all those by saying, yeah, my brother's the same way. My dad's the same way. My whole family does this thing. And it just sort of seemed like, well, that's just a weird thing that us Andersons do, not knowing that we all had ADHD.

Have you discussed it now with your family now that you're kind of learning more about it? Yeah, we've had a lot of talks about it. My parents are, I think they've reluctantly accepted that they have it, but, know, they're, they're pretty old and they, they wouldn't appreciate me saying that, but you know, they're, they're in their elder years and I think they're just not as concerned about it, which I get they're retired. It's not as important to them. Um, and I know for some people, I know people that have been diagnosed with ADHD when they're in their sixties or their seventies and they've found it still really helpful for them. So age doesn't have to be a limiting factor, but for my parents, they're just like,

eh, I don't know about that. Yeah, I've recently, I have a friend recently who was diagnosed, and she's an adult with ADHD, and I feel like, I think it really has helped her a lot. I think she's really, like, learning from that. And I do think this is something that folks should be aware of. And I appreciate you sharing those resources, because I think a lot of people just don't know where to start if they're curious. Do you have any insights from bringing up the topic with family members that you would give some advice to people who want to have that conversation with maybe some family members

who would resist the idea that maybe they're the source of this, for example, talking to your parents? It's important to know that everyone's on their own journey. And so when I first found out, I was really excited and wanted to talk to everybody. And I would like talk to a friend and be like, hey, you probably definitely have this as well. And that is not the way to do it. Yeah, I think that probably would not be. Yeah. And so I was just so excited because it was so meaningful for me

that I wanted everyone to kind of experience that same thing. And yeah, that's definitely not the approach to take. So for me, with my parents, I think I learned it's good to talk about how it's been So for me, with my parents, I think I learned it's, it's good to talk about how it's been beneficial for me. And yeah, just sort of be sensitive to like, your job is not to diagnose anybody else, you can tell them about your story. And if they're interested, they will ask. And that is definitely something I've seen, like, I just kind of became an open book about my own diagnosis and I talk freely about my

own ADHD. And then that attracts a lot of people that recognize themselves in my story. And then it kind of opens that door to being able to show them more and help them maybe have they a lot of people called ADHD a, you know, quote unquote, good news diagnosis. Because once you find out that you have it, your life can improve so much because there's so many things that can get better when you can put. And I mean, medication can be a big factor and learning how effective like exercise can be and just so many coping strategies like learning that you have it can make your life so much better. And just that you stop the emotional shaming and blaming your lack of willpower, which isn't really a factor in why you're not doing stuff. So yeah, I think just sort of openly talking about your own story will really attract people to that are interested to talking to you about it.

Well, I get that impression that it's really helped you discovering this diagnosis. Yeah, it's been huge. Prior to finding out, I've probably had close to 30 jobs in my life, which is a lot of jobs. I would just jump from job to job. And once I hit a point where I just got bored, or maybe I had a rejection-sensitive dysphoria moment. And I was like, well, I don't want to work there anymore because that was awkward. I mean, I would quit jobs because of an awkward situation, which is pretty ridiculous looking back. But now I've had the job I'm working at now. I've been here for seven years.

And there's no way I would still have this job if I hadn't found out about my ADHD and learning how to better cope with it and talking with my managers about it and figuring out strategies for how to, you know, make sure that there's interesting things for me to work on so I don't get bored and making sure that I don't get blindsided. blindsided. Something that's happened to me with previous jobs is I'll have like a manager will say, hey, we need to talk. And I'm like, oh, no, that's the pit in the stomach feeling of like something bad went wrong. And I don't even know what it is. Danger, danger, tiger coming. Yes, exactly. The mind's like, oh, no. And then I would get in the meeting and they would list like, hey, these are the like 20 things that you've been doing wrong for the last nine months. And I had no idea, like it's something would fall like with ADHD. It's so much about like out of sight, out of mind. Like if it falls out of my vision, I'll forget about it completely. Like it will be gone forever until I stumble across it

again. So all these things that I had in previous jobs, I'd forget to do like, it's never going to come back unless they tell me that, Oh, Hey, you've forgot to do this thing and you haven't done it in nine months. And so one thing I've done is I've always talked to my managers about having like, Hey, at the end of every week, I want to make sure, like, I want a status report that doesn't have to be complicated. I just want to make sure that I didn't drop the ball on something and then not know that that happened. And so by having these regular meetings and regular check ins with my managers, it makes sure that I'm not dropping the ball. I'm not having like these memory, like minor little memory

glitches or whatever you call it, aren't affecting me long-term because I'm dealing with them when they happen. And that has made, yeah, such a huge difference for me. You're talking about getting the good news that you had ADHD and sharing it with other people because you thought that they would want to understand that revelation as well, especially if you saw that this could potentially help them, I'm guessing. And when you were telling that story, I felt like I have done the exact same thing with lots of other productivity advice, where I see, oh, you need to just do time blocking because then all of your time problems are going to go away. I get that excited about an idea. I become an evangelist for the idea. And I've experienced that rejection as well. And like, oh, you don't care about this

really. But I thought you said, you know, so I think there's some advice there for, for me as well. And, and other people who just, they hear about these ideas and they want to apply them to their, to your own life, but everybody has to go on their own journey, like you said, and they have to recognize this stuff for themselves and figure out what's really going to work for them. You're not going to convince a lot of people to just do something because it's worked for you, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't tell your story either. Right, exactly. I don't know what you guys are talking about. I have never given unsolicited advice. I say as I think about me doing it this morning.

Well, Jesse, thank you so much for sharing your journey with us and i'm really happy to hear that that this is kind of working out for you and it's interesting to me um that this stuff really i mean no matter who you are and where you're in life i think bringing that intentionality and the knowledge to the way you do stuff really makes such a difference. And, you know, that's the reason we called the show focus. So thank you for sharing that article to kind of get us started on this conversation and sharing so much insight for folks that are, are either, you know, suffering from ADHD or know people that are, um, I know that you've really kind of made me a lot more aware so I can be more mindful of the way

that I work with, with friends that have ADHD. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. Like I said, I love to just be able to share my story and be able to, hopefully there are people out here that are, you know, people out there that are hearing this and maybe want to take that next step like, oh, this stuff is really resonating with me. Maybe I want to look more into this. And it could really be life-changing for those people. And for the people that don't have ADHD, I hope you found something helpful as well. A lot of these about finding motivation, I think, are really universal. And a lot of the strategies that help people with ADHD are helpful for other people

as well. They're just really, really helpful when you have ADHD and your brain works that certain way. Well, like when you were talking about, you know, emotional intelligence and immediate response, I have a friend who suffers from ADHD and he is, I, I tell other, cause we have, we have many mutual friends. He, this is a friend from college and everybody's like, hi, this guy always gets so mad. I'm like, no, it's like a weather for him. It's like a rainstorm that blows in and blows out. And whenever, you know, the thunderstorm hits, you just stand back for a few minutes. And before you know it, it's gone.

And to him, it's like no big deal. And, um, I, he has told me he has ADHD, but I never made the connection that that's why he is that way. I didn't realize that was part of the ADHD. And I learned that today. Awesome. Well, yeah, that's great. It's funny that that story of your friend not knowing the details of it, but that is

people with ADHD often have no idea that that intensity is being outwardly shared. Because we feel it internally, it feels like everyone just feels that way. We're experiencing life at this intensity level, and we just sort of assume that other people are experiencing it the same way. So we'll do that in a conversation and then find out later that someone thinks that we explode. And we're like, what? I was just sort of excited about this thing or whatever it might be. And for me, I just step back and literally like in five minutes, we can start talking about the Dodgers and it's like it never

happened. Right. Yep. So Jesse, where can people find you and where should they go to learn more? Yeah. So I am under Jesse J. Anderson, which is just my first name, middle initial, last name, Jesse J. Anderson. I use that everywhere. So primarily I'm on Twitter, but you can also find me on TikTok where I talk a lot about ADHD as well as Instagram. And that's my website too, just jessejanderson.com. And also I just announced about a month ago that I'm starting to write a book. So I have a book on ADHD that it's tentatively titled Refocus right now. And if you want to find out more about that book or maybe even sign up for the wait list, you can go to Refocusbook.com

to check that out. Excellent. And good luck with the book. I know that's a lot of it's a hard work to write a book. So good luck with that. Thank you. We are the focus podcast. You can find us at relay.fm slash focused. We have a forum it's over at talk.macpires.com. We just have a little bit of space in the corner down there at the bottom. So you can share with us there. We want to thank our sponsors express VPN, Novo and privacy, and we'll see you next time.